How Crash Saved The Oscars

How Crash Saved The Oscars

The year that Crash happened

In 2005, we saw a remarkably strong year, with such dark horses as A History of Violence, The Squid and the Whale and Capote among the critically acclaimed films that year. Of course, the movie that everyone was rallying behind was Ang Lee’s masterful Brokeback Mountain, a beautifully written and directed romance about gay cowboys that was considered such a progressive step for Hollywood. Brokeback Mountain had almost swept the critics' prizes and went on to take home the Golden Globe and Directors Guild Prize.

Then came that fateful moment on the evening of March 5, 2006: Jack Nicholson took to the podium to announce Best Picture. Everyone was waiting to hear him say, “Brokeback Mountain.” But he didn’t. He opened the envelope and took a moment to register what he had just read. Then, almost choking on his own words, Nicholson announces that the Oscar goes to Crash, right before raising his eyebrows at the audience and exhaling an astonished “whoa.”

The Academy Awards had just outdone themselves. The movie that realistically should not even have been nominated had conquered. It’s not that Crash was a bad film; it was a mediocre and simplistic melodrama that heavy-handedly dealt with racism without having anything remotely intellectual to say about it. It was a lackluster imitation of better L.A.-based mosaics like Robert Altman’s Short Cuts and P.T. Anderson’s Magnolia. It gave audiences and Oscar voters the shameful comfort that they are not racist just for having seen the film.

Beyond the award

Sure, the Oscars have picked ’em bad in the past, but the Crash upset was far more implicating. It was no longer just a matter of poor taste; it was political, and as top Oscar pundit Sasha Stone recalls, “the outcry was immediate.”

Stone has been reporting on the Oscars for 11 years on her popular Oscar-watching site AwardsDaily.com. Her opinion is so revered that The Hollywood Reporter frequently checks in on her site to get a measure of the Oscar race. She was among many whose jaw dropped at Crash’s victory, noticing the foul stench of homophobia in the air.

Stone agrees that the backlash was deeply felt by the Academy, especially because this time, it wasn’t just the bloggers that were fuming. She points us to an incendiary article written by Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan, who wrote: “In the privacy of the voting booth, as many political candidates who've led in polls only to lose elections have found out, people are free to act out the unspoken fears and unconscious prejudices that they would never breathe to another soul, or, likely, acknowledge to themselves. And at least this year, that acting out doomed Brokeback Mountain.”

What criteria is the Academy using? More on how Crash saved the Oscars...